Batman's Most Worthless Supervillain 

Dude never even kidnapped Alfred PENNYworth

I think its funny that the writers ran out of penny themed scenarios so the penny plunderer just locks batman and robin in a room and fills it with carbon monoxide

childhood is when you idolize batman adulthood is when you realize the penny plunderer makes more cents.

Its surprising that the Penny Plunderer gets the electric chair simply because he killed ONE guy and steal a bunch of pennies whereas The Joker, Scarecrow, and Mr. Freeze gets away with committing thousands of murders.

No other villain is even a quarter as despicable as the Penny Plunderer. If I had a nickel for every dime he pulls off a scheme outmatching anything the Joker can pull off, I’d have 4 nickels because he hasn’t appeared enough.

The fact that the dude was hiding a tear gas bomb in a Penny means we were one step away from a dude hiding white phosphorous in an egg salad sandwich

This guy legitimately said “I SMELL PENNIES” and became a Batman villain

Okay, this is worth sharing here. My dad went to a private school when he grew up. And the school policy is that if you had enough church attendances, the school was connected to a church, you didn't have to pay tuition. Well, due to family circumstances, the church attendances had been to OTHER churches and not the church the school was attached to. So they had to pay tuition. Keep in mind they went to church every Sunday, just not THAT church. As such, they were rather pissed. So, they paid the tuition, in pennies. Grandpa brought in a full wheelbarrow of pennies, said "Here's the tuition, have fun counting" and left. They never asked for tuition again.

I feel like not enough people are talking about how the Penny Plunderer won both his fistfights with Batman. Like straight up, concussed him with a roll of pennies and scampered. Imagine that happening nowadays.

"Betrayed by pennies!" says the character whose motivation was that he thought pennies ruined his life and wanted revenge on pennies. Why did he suddenly think the pennies were on his side to begin with? Penny Plunderer is such a forgettable villain that he forgot his own origin story within his debut appearance.

Fun fact, when the half Penny was removed from circulation, it was worth about a dime when inflation is taken into account

The Penny Plunderer's greatest scheme to date is going to supermarkets with no self checkout and only 1 checkout lane open at the time and paying in pennies. Effectively holding the entire store ransom and torturing poor retail workers in the process.

Penny Plunderer kills one guy and does like five robberies for literal pocket change and gets a death sentence once Batman catches him, meanwhile The Joker gets sent to a poorly secured asylum for the umpteenth time after gassing an orphanage, bombing a church, and shooting up a hospital for shits and giggles.

They executed Coyne, but they let the Joker run rampant.

I *DESPISE* how beautiful the redesign of Joe Coyne is from his Chronicles appearance. That wispy hair and dainty mustache, and just that *pose* of him sitting on the stool like that just hit me like a fucking BUS; And now ill have to cry myself to sleep knowing that I've caught feelings for possibly one of the most obscure fictional losers modern media has to offer us.

The only thing I can imagine Joker's "Bad Penny Crimes", is him introducing millions of pennies with his face on it into Gotham's economy.

I adore that Batman's grand escape plan from the villains death trap is literally just calling the police.

If Kite Man can have a reboot from a complete joke to one of the most popular non-mainstream villians Batman has, complete with actually good backstory, Penny Pincher probably can too.

I can see the Penny Plunderer be a legit villian in Batman's world. The comics gave me some good ideas for him. Let me entertain the idea for a second. Let's make him a bit different, a contrast in Batman's dark world. Just about every Batman Villian has a tragic backstory. Let's give this guy a normal background, and have him turn into a small time robber when he couldnt provided for himself in Gotham. One day, he became a bit ambitious and made a plan to rob an armored bank truck, not a small feat. He noticed that the men handling the money bags werent very observant when making transfers, and managed to snatch a bag and make a getaway. When he opened the bag, he found not wads of hundred dollar bills, but pennies, not even worth $50. He was later caught by investigators, and news broke out of his 'heist'. He became the laughing stock of the police department, the media, and his cellmates, and was dubbed the Penny Plunderer. His attributes? He has a reputation among the prison for being creative and cunning. Not Joker levels, but if he's given enough time; he can make some elaborate plots to accomplish almost anything, and has determination to back it up. He catches small details and bits of information anyone can overlook, and can take just the smallest weaknesses and exploit them. He also earned loyalty and respect among his crew. Gotham villians disregards their mentchmen and seemingly throw away their lives. Unlike the other villians, he cares about his crew because he was as vunerable and broke as they were, almost seeing them as friends. When a 'lowly hentchman' was captured by police, he and his gang went out of their way to rescue him. His weakness? He's a goofball prone to mistakes. His oversite of stealing a bag full of pennies? That's just one of many screwups he makes. Have this elaborate plan to rob a national bank... guess who forgot to bring ammo for their shiny new weapons, and have to pull the heist all on a bluff. Crap, you can give hin a bit of a legacy of being the guy who almost killed batman. The batman underestimated him and thought he was investigating another 'thug'. This wounded up with him trapped in a vault. The only reason he escaped was that he forgot to lock the door before leaving. Just a fun concept to explore with him. I say he's overlooked.

After Across the Spiderverse made the Spot of all villains a real villain and The Suicide Squad legitimized Pokadot Man, I'm convinced that any villain can work if someone tries hard enough, even the Penny Plunderer. I can just imagine him having a scheme to destroy digital money transactions, dramatically increasing the value of a penny and destroying the economy or some kind of complicated widespread economic scheme that would be especially topical in the age of inflation, debt, and consumer madness.

In defense of The Penny Plunderer: Using a roll of pennies as weighted knuckles work _really_ well. And Disguising a small yeild tear gas/pepper spray bomb as a roll of coins is pretty dang cool. Even cooler than making bat-shaped ninja stars if i do say so myself.

Penny Plunderer is potentially the most dangerous superhero if he was real. If he can somehow hide tear gas in a penny roll there’s probably even more extreme things he could do

The Penny Plundered is just a Wordgirl villain before Wordgirl was even a thing, before Dr. Two Brains was threatening to destroy the whole city for 20$ worth of cheese, The Penny Plundered was gasing people via penny word play.

For some reason "call the reverse police" is what broke me. I can't stop laughing

This man single handedly got me into Batman graphic novels and for that I am grateful

I think this villain could really work in our day and age imagine: The penny plunderer has stayed dormant for the past 40 years meanwhile us Americans have begun to neglect the penny like Huggbees said “when’s the last time you used a penny?” The penny plunderer collects all the neglected Pennies and creates some big copper super weapon or another even bigger penny that rolls around and crushes everything in its path.

I honestly love the idea of a super villain that torments the city just from committing petty crimes and generally being a public nuisance but on a mass scale to the point the police can’t do anything to stop it, being forced to call in Batman and what’s expected to be a simple and easy case it’s actually a massive giga-brain scheme that puts anything the Joker and Riddler did to shame.

I suggest we introduce his son, the Dollar Desperado, a villain who is obsessed with 1 dollar bills and commits crimes only involving single bucks.

Guy: "Finally, I can keep these pennies to myself." _Penny Plunderer appears_ Penny Plunderer: "I SMELL PENNIES!"

In fact, the SOS signal was designed to be the most recognizable Morse code signal. It's three short, three long, then three short. So it's plausible that an operator would recognize it. Also telephone companies used to also be telegraph companies, so they would also be more likely to be familiar with Morse code.

The funny thing about this is, the Penny Plunderer got closer to killing Batman than most others. Not just that, HE gets the death panalty, NOT the Joker killing hundreds a week, not Death Stroke who gets paid to murder people, the guy obsessed with Pennies!

His joke is that he dies 4 times in the silliest ways and somehow convinces the devil to let him live every time

What's funny is that, during the second WW, pennies became impractical even then. That's why they had to make steel pennies for a while. Also, those coins were made specifically of low-grade steel, which probably wouldn't have the conductivity required for what Batman did.

Joker: *Kills multiple people and shows multiple attempts at global destruction* Batman: I sleep. Coyne: *Kills only 1 guy while stealing pennies, and pennies only.* Batman: Your free trial of life has expired.

The fact that he was considered a genuine treat in this comic shows that during this time, the writers must have been strapped with good ideas for super villains

Reminds me of a Stripperella villain named Cheapo whose gimmick was that everything he did had to be inexpensive, from his tools to his henchmen and even the targets of his heists. He's purely a comedic parody of janky DC villains and maybe even of Penny Plunderer in particular but even then he's still so much more compelling and the writing for him was pretty creative.

Batman has The Penny Plunderer, Spider-Man has The Wall.. would be cool to get a full worst villain list and ranking/tier.

I think it would be really fun to bring back the penny plunderer as a serious villain, like make him an anticapitalist who sees pennies as a metaphor for the working class. Give him a harsh backstory like: "His mother worked as a housekeeper for one of gotham's elite and never paid her enough to live off of but was willing to give bonuses for going "above an beyond" implying that penny plunderer might be the illegitimate son of this billionaire, but she got sick and the hospital charged out the nose for her to be treated and even then she died, and penny plunderer couldn't even get to her in time because when he took a cab to the hospital he was stopped by the cab driver and ended up one penny short, so the cab driver took him around back and beat him to a pulp over a single penny, so by the time he finally came to and stumbled into the hospital his mother was already dead, then combined with all the medical debt and other debts she had in her life everything she owned was sold off to pay the debters until finally he goes to close his mother's bank account and the teller hands over the last of his mother's material wealth, his inheritance you might say, a single penny, thus driving him over the edge and using that penny as his symbol" Dont have him commit strictly crimes that are inherently penny themed, but just have penny elements, so he'll steal a priceless painting but replace it with a copy that is made out of pennies, have him rob the elites at high class functions with his gun that shoots pennies and "pay" the elites with a single penny for their generous "donations", have him kidnap the mayor's daughter and have the glass cell she's in slowly be filled with pennies so if they don't give him what he wants by midnight she'll be crushed under the weight, that kinda thing.

You know, the very second I heard this guy's name, it immediately clicked that the giant penny almost universally in the Batcave probably involved him. Funny to think that such an unknown villain left such an iconic piece of the Batcave's design.

Kinda respect how he looks out for his gang. he even looks after their health.

22:00 I love the idea that Superman kills the Penny Plunderer by smashing him with a giant penny the way someone would kill a spider with an old textbook.

Here's an idea for a Penny Plunderer rebirth, he focuses entirely on pre-1983 pennies, hoarding them so he can ILLEGALLY melt them down to sell the copper as scrap. Batman thwarts his dastardly deed, and in the process the penny plunderer punches Robin in the face and then gets crushed when his kiln full of molten pennies falls on him for some reason.

Aside from the dated plot, props to that woman for recognizing the morsecode!!! I imagine that was a cool skill even after the war

I think it'd be funny if his gimmick was that he only stole pennies. Due to their worthlessness, not many people would care enough to report it, making it low risk. Maybe he could be a very cautious villain, not wanting to steal anything too valuable and risk being caught.

Fun fact: in Gotham knights (The game) the penny can be found later in the campaign when returning to the batcave, the tip credits the penny to mainly twoface but also mentions the penny plunderer. Pretty interesting for so many years later to return Coyne to the giant penny lore for absolutely no reason.

This guy took "throw money at your problems" literally.

They could update the Penny Plunderer backstory to be finance related, perhaps involving some hacking skill. For example, he could work in a Stock Exchange, where he made mad money by tweaking the exchange rate by a penny, and save the difference for himself. He quickly become wealthy, but became a "Nouveau Riche" at the eyes of the aristocratic life of Gotham. He couldn't stand being seen not as equal as them. Perhaps its first crime would be to change the wealth of people to pennies, but find out billionaire ending up as millionnaire ($1000M → $10M) changed nothing: he doesn't belong to their class. But this is too cartoony if he just removed two 00 at their bank account. Perhaps it would be more realist that he manages to bankrupt them or buy their companies. Yet, even with his efforts, it would still be a "Nouveau Riche" and a laughing stock for the high society of Gotham. This is where he snaps and engage a personal vendetta against the "Bourgeoisie" of Gotham. Not only he is willing to kill the rich of Gotham, but their family as well to make sure nothing could be inherited. This is where it takes its "Penny Plunderer" vilain arc. Either it manages to kill people with Pennies, or sign the crime with Pennies as a way to tell: _"Even the rich are not worth a penny, and once they are dead they will be forgotten as pennies on the ground"_ or something like that. He would quickly have a hatred toward Bruce Wayne, as he is "the child who inherited everything and didn't work for it". Not Batman (which he could admire), but Bruche Wayne (which he hates), even if Bruce Wayne is the only humble rich guy in town to acknowledge his wealth and introduce him to the high society of Gotham.

Coyne had a chance to learn in prison, but decided not to change. And when it came down to it, he came up short.

The easiest way to adapt the Penny Plunderer is to make him a hitman whose MO is to take a penny as a trophy. That way he gets to keep his eccentric obsession with pennies, but he doesn't get treated like a joke for it.

Penny Plunderer could really work as a symbol for thenworking class with lots of Charisma. Someone who views the world as being too money hungry to the point where if you were off by a single penny you would be refused vital life services. He could be a message on empathy and the cost of living, the pennies being a metaphor for how his gang is useless alone but together they can form into something as valuable as a dime, a quarter, and even a dollar. Together they are strong enough to change the world. But him getting thwarted because he didnt have a nickel is also pretty dang funny

"Oh My God! They killed Penny..." "...Plunderer"

The Coin Gun is a Hardmode ranged weapon that uses coins as ammunition, which cannot be retrieved once fired. Its damage and velocity depend on the type of coin fired. It is dropped very rarely (1/4000 (0.025%) chance) by Pirate Invasion enemies, excluding the Parrot. The drop rate for the Pirate Captain is quadrupled (1/1000 (0.1%) chance) and increased again with the Flying Dutchman (1/50 (2%) chance).

I think the Batman villain with the saddest fate was the second Mad Hatter. Dude went from being one of Batman’s main rogues during the 50s-70s, even appearing on the Adam West show, to total obscurity because one writer in the early 80s decided to bring back the first Mad Hatter, who’d before than had only appeared once. To rub salt into the wound even more Hatter 1 claimed his name was Jarvis Tetch and that Hatter 2 was an imposter despite the Tetch name originating with Hatter 2.

Just imagine if the Penny Plunderer had an actual penny related superpower like... penny magnetism to be a penny themed Magneto, or pennymancy to magically conjure pennies to use in imaginative ways, or something.

Honesty this villain’s existence makes no Cents. Obviously he’d be wanted by the Coppers but not much is gonna Change overtime. If I were to a Coin an insult, he’s neither Pennywise nor Poundfoolish, because he’d never figure out what to do with a pound in the first place. I still find it absurdly hilarious he was Centenced to death over this.

"Proving that, even in America, you can still choose a wrong place to live." Yup, best quote I've heard in a long time.

I would very much like to hear you talk about Snowflame, the cocaine powered super villain

I love how he just like kept pausing every time he dropped a roll of pennies

7:24 Joe Coyne: "You’re wrong, -sulphuric acid- tear gas bomb!"

16:30 I swear to god I paused here and honestly pondered this for a few moments. I'm not usually good at this stuff and the possibilities in this scenario seemed limitless. Then it actually hit me. "That phone is gonna be a pay phone, and that's gonna fuck him up somehow cause he used all his pennies fighting Batman or something." I can't believe I was even remotely close.

“But wait ‘till I grow up!” says the 60-year-old disguised as a child

3:52 had to comment again for this. Superman with pym particles would be op af for one reason: shrinking a sun. Think about this for a minute. If Superman had a bracelet with a shrunk yellow sun inside, he’d have an ongoing power source that’d keep charging him up outside of the boundaries of earth’s sun. However, to really get the most out of this, he’d need a bracelet with 3 shrunk suns: yellow, blue and red. Yellow for the usual powers, blue for more power at once and red sunlight to dampen his powers to better sell his Clark Kent persona and be able to experience humanity more in depth at a similar level to them. When in red sunlight, Supes would have more potential to train himself up, so when he charges back up, he’s far tougher and has a better grip of himself outside of his powers. Him being able to train under Batman on a human level would be insane with a bracelet to pretty much turn his powers on and off.

6:48 Question, I have many. Most involving pennies. A few on Mr.Coyne's sudden mental state deterioration.

My brother-in-law is a die-hard Batman fan who asserts that every member of the Rogue’s Gallery is a negative reflection of Bruce Wayne’s psyche. I like to bring up the weird ones and watch him try to rationalize characters like Calendar Man within his theory. Thank you for giving me one more with which to annoy him 😂 Edit: I predict he’ll say something about money or the Wayne fortune or something.

I remember reading the first one as a child in school, it was actually pretty good. It was in a collection of World's Finest Comics, which had some other fairly stupid villains, like Lucky Starr, whose whole thing was literally that he thought he was invincible but in reality was just lucky. And then he died.

- Killer Moth - Kite Man - Condiment King - Crazy Quilt - Polka-Dot Man and now penny plunderer. Batman truly does have the greatest rogues gallery

The roll of pennies tear gas gives me the vibe of "Wrong. Sulfuric Acid"

I would like a reboot of some kind of the Penny Plunderer, something maybe to do with inflation and the futility of money, a man who went insane because his family starved to death during a depression but someone was selling food for a penny he could not afford, and as Coyne cries over his parents, he finds a single penny on the ground, which sparks his madness. Then he basically becomes the new Bane, fighting against the corruption and uselessness of currency. Of course I always try to come up with an interesting new adaptation for every video like this I watch

I think there's a lot you could do with the character. What if you reimagined him as a common burglar whose calling card is leaving a single penny at the scene of the crime. Things begin to escalate as suddenly people start showing up dead in increasingly brutal ways with pennies over their cold, lifeless eyes and eventually Batman gets called in to try and work out if these are just random acts of violence or if there's a predictable pattern to the killings. I think that it would be interesting to see something gradually escalate from petty crime to supervillainy as the Plunderer gets the attention of the media and develops a taste for murder, making cryptic phonecalls to newspapers and revelling in the attention. For the story to work it really needs to take its time building suspense and it should present the situation from the perspective of a regular cop getting dragged into something far beyond what they're capable of handling, with Batman probably only getting involved after showing explicitly how the department fails to contain things and only ever being presented from an external perspective. The Killer only ever being shown in shadow as evidence of the department's failure to perform adequate policework and follow up on leads, kind of like happens with real serial killers.

Watched your video on Snowflame the cocane powered super villain & it was worth the wait. Well done sir

8:08 I've watched this video four times and I only _just_ got the joke about fighting a war over a "one penny black". Huggbees wit never ceases to amaze me

This video actually gives some insight into how you could make the Penny Pincher a viable villain again, in a similar light to Kite Man. Make him themed around inflation, and the absurdity that it costs 2 cents to make 1 cent in currency. He's got a lot of old world values that make him dated as an individual, and he despises that we are going in the direction of digital currency. Wouldn't be too original, but I think it could be done with the right writer, and actually be interesting to get Batman's take on economics, especially in Gotham.

It boggles my mind how freakin’ Striperella was able to do more with a penny-pinching villain that Batman could

Sometimes I want to see a Batman series that focuses on his worse villains. No I don't mean the most dangerous or the ones who suck. But the ones who actually are completely forgotten. Like imagine them banding together and deciding to make it big through sheer cunning.

4:37 Real ones know the proper use for pennies is scratching the foil off of lottery tickets

Huggbees is so funny I can literally feel his comedic energy coming inside of me

I’d like to think if any of these incredibly stupid Batman villains were to get an actual modern adaptation I think they’d be presented as so paradoxically insane that their heinous acts of insanity would exceed the tone of whatever adaptation they appeared in.

The penny plunderer is the villain version of the I smell Pennies meme.

I wouldn't mind a super-league of Penny Plunderer, Nickel and Dime, and Jeremy from TheQuartering

It's the villain we do not deserve, and not want

Y'know, they made Polkadot Man a really cool character. Hell, they even made Kiteman a moderately interesting to even compelling character. Its not improbable that Penny Pluderer could also get this treatment. At least I hope, because I wanna see what a serious or badass take would be on him.

Here’s how they could make the penny thing work nowadays. Instead of stealing pennies for The coins themselves, he could steal only coins with some significance, like coins that are no longer made or coins connected to historic events. This would increase their value somewhat but more importantly if he is obsessed with pennies they would be far more valuable to him than any old coin you could find at the bank

You could make him more of an underboss to Penguin. Not really obsessed with pennies just infamous for his use of penny rolls as fist stuffers. Keeps a roll in each pocket and enthusiastic when using them. Backstory can be relatively the same just dont make him as goofy. Just a gangster with some pennies.

Ok, I'll be honest, Batman making an improvised battery out of zinc, copper and salt water to send an S.O.S. message was pretty cool, even if we have to assume there just happened to be a saltshaker and a glass of water in the room and that the police managed to decode all of the message and arrive there before Batman and Robin passed out. Considering the amount of absurdities Batman has always come up with to single-handedly escape life-or-death situations in the comics, him relying on sending a message to the authorities through a relatively mundane solution to survive instead of escaping completely by himself is actually a bit refreshing, as it reminds us he's still human. Like, if he just sent S.O.S. instead of explaining his whole location and if the comic said they got the water and the salt from the lunch some crook forgot there or whatever, I could see it as a creative, if pretty convoluted solution.

I mean as long as Penny Plunderer uses pennies to COMMIT crimes and doesn't actually steal pennies, his gimmick could still work.

That guy took the whole I smell pennies thing to another level lol 😂.

I could see a modern Penny Plunderer leaning in to his death theme. Make him the ghost of a robber who died in the 40s or something.

If Penny Plunderer were written today, he could've been a good villain. He could've been a radical socialist using pennies as a symbol of revolution, and he could've had a rivalry with The Penguin due to his well-off upbringing compared to Penny Plunderer's life of poverty. I want this to be real.

I have an idea for a modern Penny Plunderer. After his successful start with many his infamous penny based robberies the Penny Plunderer is out of prison to plan his next dastardly scheme, but he can't come up with anything. He can't think of any more penny-based crimes to commit. He begins to question his whole supervillain identity as he navigates a world where no one remembers when he was top of the world.

0:38 Spider-Man’s villain line up is also called his rouge gallery

The penny plunderer would be a great name for a villian who robs people who are already poor.

Oh shit, this man just used a killing joke tie in as a throw away. Seriously this man's a legend.

*DO NOT* forget to talk about Snowflame, the cocaine powered supervillain. I _really_ want you to talk about Snowflame, the cocaine powered supervillain.

I absolutely love how Joe’s “younger” self says “But wait till I grow up…“ while being drawn like a grown man in his mid 40s

17:20 -- Hmmm... Well, at least we have evidence that Earth-2's Billy Batson kept at it as a paperboy rather than turn to crime.

its a small thing, but the way he drops a roll of pennies at 28:01, looks at it for a split second, then moves on completely unbothered cracked me up

Don't forget that in 90% of Calendar Man's appearances, he's sitting in a jail cell.

How hilarious would it be to see Coyne’s goons just standing around, scratching their heads wondering why it’s been 20 or 30 minutes without a call.

I feel like a modern version of coyn could be having him steal vintage and antique items, specifically items from around the world's finest comics era, like payphones and the old scales

You’re 100% right about the Rogue’s Gallery claim, I literally never knew it was an actual criminal term until you just told me. I think most people are the same way. You were also right about the 18+ Google search fact.